The Siren Depths by Martha Wells Read Free Book Online

form a thin little boy with dark bronze skin, dark hair, and grave eyes, dressed in a brown shirt and pants a little too big for him. He didn’t talk either, except in whispers to Frost and Thorn, but at least he could talk if he felt like it. He apparently didn’t feel like flying at all.
    “You’re going to have to do it some time,” Moon pointed out. He didn’t want to press the issue, but it would have been nice to have a clue as to what the issue was. Bitter liked to fly with Moon, clinging to his chest, so it wasn’t a fear of height or fast motion. It had to have something to do with the destruction of the court of Sky Copper. Bitter, Frost, and Thorn were the only survivors, rescued from their Fell captors and brought to join the court of Indigo Cloud. It had been a traumatic and terrible event for the three fledglings, but Moon wasn’t sure how that had evolved into Bitter’s refusal to learn to fly.
    Bitter leaned on Moon’s arm and sighed, apparently weary of Moon’s wrongheaded persistence on this point.
    A large number of Arbora were out on the platforms, digging or weeding in the gardens, probably discussing their plans to clutch. Most were teachers or hunters, the ones in their groundling forms dressed for muddy work in cloth smocks or leather kilts. An Arbora had been making his way down the branch toward them for some time, collecting balls of moss fallen off the higher branches that could be dried and used in weaving. His scales were green faded to gray in large patches, and heavily scarred in spots. As he reached them, he said, “Hello, consort. Hello, little one.” It was Dash, a very old Arbora, who wasn’t doing particularly well in his old age. He had been ill in the various sicknesses that had plagued the old colony, and injured in fighting the Fell, and it had all taken a toll. He put his bag aside and sat down beside Moon and Bitter, grunting as his bones creaked. “Now, which one are you?” he asked Moon.
    “Moon, Jade’s consort,” Moon reminded him. Dash remembered the distant past better than recent events, and he tended to confuse Moon with the long-gone consorts who had died or been sent away to other courts turns ago.
    “Ah, that’s right, you’re new.” Dash stared downward, frowning. “What are they doing down there? In that pool.”
    Moon leaned forward to look. A few hundred paces below, some Arbora were working on a small platform, close enough to the waterfall to be drenched by its spray. They were digging out an old drainage pool and channel that had been choked with dirt and weeds. Moon said, “Trying to get it working again. It’s probably got something to do with the blocked drains.”
    The drains and water channels inside the tree had been one of the biggest problems in getting the colony livable again. The mountain-tree drew so much water up through its roots that it expelled it in springs. Some of it was discharged through the waterfall, but the channels carved through the tree also used it to fill the bathing pools and to flush out the latrines into the roots. But generations of disuse had left many of the channels clogged; there was a whole group of Arbora who had done nothing for all the past months except trace the channels throughout the enormous space and hunt down the obstructions. It was all they talked about, and everyone had learned to be careful which levels of the bowers to avoid if you didn’t want to hear about drains. And no one wanted to hear about drains.
    Moon whistled sharply for Frost and Thorn to call them to the branch. They probably needed a nap by now, and he wanted to be able to make a quick escape if Dash wanted to talk about drains.
    Frost and Thorn wheeled toward the branch and landed next to Dash. “We’re hungry,” Frost announced.
    “Say hello to Dash,” Moon reminded her. The teachers had told him that fledgling queens could be difficult to raise, but Frost seemed to be taking that to an extreme. She had good days and